


Homesick

by Lilbug121



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: 2D is Noodle's dopey big brother, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gorillaz is a family and everyone loves Noodle, Murdoc is the creepy uncle who always ruins christmas, Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, Russel is the responsible father figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilbug121/pseuds/Lilbug121
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noodle keeps the crate she arrived to Kong Studio in, and sleeps in it when she gets homesick for the past. What part of her past the crate comes to represent changes as she grows up, but one thing remains the same; Gorillaz is her family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homesick

The first few weeks Noodle spends at Kong Studio, she willingly sleeps in the crate that she arrived in. While the journey in it was a mix of scary, boring, and uncomfortable, it and her guitar were her most familiar possessions in this new and scary place where no one even spoke the same language as her. She pushes it into the room she is told (in one or two poorly pronounced words read from a English/Japanese dictionary) is her bedroom, puts some pillows into it, and each night she drags the blanket off her bed and curls up inside the crate. The smell of the wood, the light streaming in between the slats, the small space, they all are a comfort to her in their familiarity. 

Eventually she starts to sleep on the bed, when she has learned a little English and comes to understand more about where she is and what she is doing (and she is very excited to be doing anything that involves her guitar), but on days when she feels homesick for a place that she doesn't even remember, or gets too frustrated by the (thankfully eroding) language barrier, she would sometimes pull some pillows and a blanket into her crate, and it would all melt away as she slept. 

On one such day, she had also happened to sleep much later than she usually does. Usually she woke up even before 2D, who had a habit of waking up early to take his pills. He was still the only one awake, in fact, and it had concerned him to leave his room and not find her eating cereal and watching tv like he usually did. He gave it an hour or so, but every second when she didn't amble out of her room made him more and more anxious. What if she was sick? What if she got kidnapped? What if she was eaten by zombies? He didn't want to invade her privacy, but the worry got to him quickly and he decided to check up on her. 

As quietly as he could, he opened her door a crack and squinted in the dim light at her bed. When his eyes adjusted, his heart nearly stopped when he saw her empty bed and he let out a squeak of worry. This was followed quickly by a sigh of relief, as his worried noise must have woken Noodle, and she made a sleepy yawning sound. 

"Noodle?"

Noodle poked her head up over the side of the crate. She was wearing a t-shirt she "borrowed" from 2D as a nightgown, and her guitar was propped up in the corner of the crate.

She yawned, and pawed sleepily at her eyes. "Asa yoi" she said blearily. Then, after having woken up some, "good morning".

2D flicked on her light, and they both winced at it. He wished her the same as he walked all the way into her room, then bent down to meet her at more or less eye level. 

"How come you were sleepin' in that box?" He asked, trying to remember to speak as clearly as he could manage (which wasn't very much, but he tried). 

There was a pause as Noodle processed what 2D had said and then tried to find words to respond. 2D liked that about talking to Noodle. There was always plenty of time for him to process what was being said. 

"It feels... familiar to me, when I am, um, home sick I think is the word. I do not remember life before here. But I remember the box. It feels...I do not know the words for it. Not in English, but also not in Japanese."

2D thought about what Noodle had said, and nodded.

"I think I get it, kind of. I have a keyboard I've had since I was a kid, and it always makes me feel less homesick when I start to miss my parents" he offered, hoping that he had in fact gotten it and not made more of an idiot of himself. 

Noodle nodded. "Hai, yes, that sounds very much like what I mean. My guitar also, I came with it and playing it is something that I remember when other things I do not remember. It is something...understood, when speaking is not. It makes me happy to play it, and sometimes to, um, to be only near it." 2D nodded in understanding, and says that he got worried when he was up and she wasn't. She climbed out of the box, and her and 2D straightened out her comforter on her bed while she explained that Russell (who had taken to caring for the child much better than the other two and actually understood the importance of things like bed times and chewable vitamins) had let her stay up late to watch the end of a movie, so she didn't get up as early as usual. 

Having an adult awake meant that she could use the stove, so Noodle stood on a step stool and the two of them made scrambled eggs (although the way it worked out, it seemed more like Noodle was supervising 2D). They ate their breakfast, and then Noodle washed up and got dressed. 

Her day proceeded as normal. She played with Del and 2D until Russell woke up, and then had 2D and Russell for company until Murdoc woke up around noon (which for him could be called an early start), at which point she took great joy in pestering the tired and likely-hungover man with requests to play with her, which he always refused unless they were alone and she knew it. 

Later that day 2D showed her the keyboard he had told her about, and somehow the two felt closer for it. Not like they shared a secret exactly, as neither of them had really been trying to keep it one, but something very similar. Like they understood each other more fully, and had found something in common on a very personal level. Noodle wonders if her other band mates have something similar, or if they even get homesick at all. She decides not to ask though. It remains something between just her and 2D for quite a long time, even up to when Noodle returns to Kong from Japan years later. 

 

She had left her box there when they went to America in their disastrous attempt at making a movie, and after she had killed enough of the undead hoard to feel relatively safe again she went around to air out the rooms and check to see what had been stolen or vandalized.

She was not surprised by the fact that her crate was still there, except maybe that it hadn't been used to build a fire or something, but she hadn't thought much about the crate itself in some time. She walks over to it, surprised to see how much smaller it is than in her memories (though still a large box, as it had fit a young girl and a guitar relatively comfortably). She smiles to herself as she remembers years ago, sleeping in the crate to ward of homesickness for a life she couldn't remember. She feels a new stab of homesickness, not for Japan or an unknown past or a recently discovered past, but for a life she lead but a few years ago. She misses making music, but she had already been missing that, and once she made Kong inhabitable again she had already planned to start working on something. She instead found herself missing Russell, and 2D, and even Murdoc. They had grown into something like a family during that first part of their careers as a band, and seeing Kong like this, her room like this, her old shipping crate that brought her here and chased off the homesickness, left her with an incredible sense of loneliness. 

She was too big to fit comfortably in the box now, she realized. She's not sure why that makes her feel so sad. 

She finds herself longing for the woody smell and enclosed space once more, this time as a memory of a remembered and less violent past, full of music and blossoming friendships. She opens her closet door, judo chops a zombie's head off, drags the box and the moth-eaten bedspread in with her, and shuts the door. She pulls the chain for the light, and miraculously the bulb dimly flickers to life. The closet is not her crate, but it is small enough around her that she feels some of that safe feeling again, and sitting on her box gives her some of the wood smell. She slings her guitar forward and starts idly strumming, realizing part way through that she was playing Re-Hash without thinking about it. 

She felt exhausted; from her trip back to England, from fighting zombies all day, from what she had learned about herself in Japan, and from what she finds herself missing now that she's back and no one else is. She needs to rest, and in addition to making her feel calm and safe the closet was probably one of the safest places she could pick to sleep at this point with all the zombies still hiding everywhere. She flips the box onto it's side so she can lay the top half of her body into it, then wraps the blanket around her like a cocoon. A few tears may have fallen from her eyes as she drifted off to sleep, but from relief or grief it is unsure. 

When she wakes up the next morning she has a stiff back, a clear head, and feels ready to take on anything, from the undead infesting the studio to the new album churning away in her mind to finding somewhere nearby that sells halfway decent air freshener, because this place reeks of garbage and rotting flesh. 

 

2D had hung onto her crate, she finds out, after he thought she was dead. Her guitar had been "destroyed" along with her body, and the shipping crate was the best thing left to remind him of her. Russell didn't understand why it was so important, because he had never known about it like 2D had despite having arguably been closer to her.

He said it didn't feel right just getting rid of it, so he kept it safe. He felt like he was maybe keeping it safe _for_ her, like she might come back some day and want it again (alive, he adds, not like a zombie. "That would be worse than you just being dead, probably. Maybe even worse than the robot, and she was really creepy. One second she was almost just like you and then next you know there was a gun poking from her mouth and a dead body on the ground!"), which might not have been the best way to mourn but she appreciates how it worked out in the end. 

Noodle slept with her head and torso in the box one last time when they returned to England from that wretched fake beach, and it stiffens her back and clears her head once more. She still has a lot to sort through in her mind, as does everyone else, but right now they're just all glad everyone else is essentially ok, though quite a bit worse for wear. 

2D checks on her every morning, more for his sake than hers, reminding himself that they're all together and they're all ok. Noodle has flipped the box upside down and uses it as a nightstand. Some nights, when she remembers too clearly what she was forced to do to save her friends, her family, she rolls over and brushes her hand against the wood of the crate and remembers the love they all share for each other, how 2D kept an old FedEx crate safe because he didn't want to loose her completely, and remembers that her sacrifices were all worthwhile. 

She is no longer homesick for various remembered and unremembered pasts.

She is simply Home.


End file.
